The vancomycin is a glycopeptide antibiotics having bactericidal actions developed in 1950s, especially having strong bactericidal actions on gram-positive cocci. Recently, infections of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus are present due to increases of infections of Staphylococcus epidermidis, it makes actions of vancomycin more important in clinic. Therefore, vancomycin is a preferred drug in treatments of serious infections caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus in clinic at present. Because of the specfic mechanism of vancomycin and features of easy decomposition in vivo of polypeptide antibiotics of vancomycin, it has been widely applied in clinic.
Besides, there have been congeneric drugs of demethyl vancomycin in China. The experimental results show that the demethyl vancomycin can effevtively inhibit colonization and reproduction of Clostridium difficile in intestine and consequently eliminate its pathogenicity as vancomycin. The demethyl vancomycin is a specific drug for treatment of Clostridium difficile-associated pseudomembranous enterocolitis with strong antibacterial actions and is also an effective drug for treatment of infections of anaerobic bacterium and some gram-positive bacterium. The demethyl vancomycin with good pharmacokinetical properties can not produce drug resistance easily, and can not produce cross-resistance with other antibiotics. But, the demethyl vancomycin can not replace of imported vancomycin all the time.

In recent years, it is an urgent need to develop novel antibiotics for treatment of human diseases. The known antibiotic substances are usually modified on the molecular structure to develop new drugs. But, such structural modification usually result in new substances loss activity required. There are multiple derivatives produced in the fermentation product of vancomycin, and different fermentation strains also result in differences of derivatives. We find from reported references that various derivatives of vancomycin are listed in the patent (Patent No. EP0159180) filed by American Lilly Company, such as M43A, M43B, M43C, M43D respectively, and their structures are as follows:

The inventor of the present application finds a novel derivative of vancomycin, dehydroxy vancomycin from fermentation products of vancomycin hydrochloride. We confirm that this dehydroxy vancomycin is a novel substance to be different from the above-mentioned four kinds of derivatives of vancomycin through their molecular structures. In particular, the structure of dehydroxy vancomycin is extremely similar to that of vancomycin. In light of good antibacterial activities of vancomycin, it can be foreseen that it will be very likely to become a novel antibiotics if the dehydroxy vancomycin is known clearly.